“Dinner time!” came the voice of Chance’s mother from outside his room.

“Coming,” he snapped back and carefully removed the browsing history of Instagram on his phone.

Chance’s mother was really strict about social media, she had forced him to set his Instagram and Twitter account to private and asked him to only accept followers who are people he knows in real life because social media is “unsafe.” 

About once in a couple of months, she would ask Chance to go through all his followers on social media and his contacts and tell her, one by one, who each of them are. To be honest, it was easy to get past her, Chance always told his mother that his net friends were people in his school and she’ll have no way of knowing if it’s the truth.

Chance finished his dinner as quickly as possibly while his 10-year-old sister, Daisy, was busy blabbering about her school day. Then, he headed outside to play basketball with his pals in a basketball court two blocks away. 

Luna had just sent over a selfie of herself on the beach, her dazzling brown hair dancing in the wind, her dark brown eyes made the sun look dull. They have been chatting and exchanging photos with each other for almost a month. Luna had commented under Chance’s Instagram post, and after finding the common interest of skateboarding (Chance is actually not that good), they began chatting and as time went by, their relationship bonded closer and they began exchanging photos.

“Hey, Chance,” Hunter was at the other side of the street with his girlfriend, Chloe. Chance was in his first year of high school, and most of his friends had girlfriends, so he sometimes felt lonely, with no one who relied on him. If only Chance could know Luna in real life, that could show off to his friends and they would be so jealous.

Chance grinned and waved at him, “Hey!” Together, they joined the other boys at the basketball court. 

“So, William, Hunter, and Chance, you go for that hoop, and me, Patrick, and Jack go that way, alright?” Tristan divided up the six boys, he was always the boss, and the “popular guy.”

Tristan tossed his jacket onto the floor and messed up his hair intentionally, then he served the ball and the game started.

“Go, Jack!” came the sweet voice of Allison. “Yes! You’re the best!” The girls always supported their boyfriends and cheered for them during the games. If only Chance had a girl beside him who would always look up to him…

Once a while, one of the boys would lift their shirt up to show off their six-pack to the girls. Even though Chance follows a lot of fitness bloggers on social media and did abs workout every day, he still couldn’t achieve the burly physique he had always longed for. Perhaps that was why the girls didn’t fall for him, but surely they could look deeper inside his personality.

Chance didn’t think that he was narcissistic, but to judge himself unbiased, he feels like he plays sports pretty well, he also has good grades, and is somewhat attractive. No girl has ever offered an opportunity for Chance, perhaps he was missing something that attracted the girls, something his friends had that he didn’t.

“Oi, Chance!” William called out as he passed the ball towards him.

Chance caught it with ease and with a few dribbles, brought it up to the hoop. While he jumped up and propelled the basketball into the hoop, Tristan leaped in front of him and blocked it, an enthusiastic exclaim of the girls followed. Tristan’s team took on the lead again and Chance tried his best to cooperate with his teammates.

Hunter struggled to clutch the ball into his hands and dribbled it to the other side of the court. There was William, holding his hands up to Hunter. He passed it to William, then William passed it back to Hunter. After he swiftly made his way through the other team’s members, Hunter brought the ball into the hoop. Then, he groomed his sweaty hair with his hand and blew a kiss to Chloe.

After the match, the six boys and four girls sat down and chatted for a while. When the girls rested their heads on the broad shoulders of his friends’, Chance couldn’t help but to feel a little jealous and to picture Luna resting her head on his.

After a couple more matches, dusk came down and the boys parted. Chance watched as Tristan draped his jacket over Melody’s shoulders and patted her lightly, then quickly turned around and headed home.

Sorry, I was just playing basketball with my friends, our school starts in a week, you? Chance texted Luna on the way home.

Me too, I’m still in Florida right now. I went surfing yesterday, it was sooo difficult, it might seem similar but it’s way harder than skateboarding.

Chance was so preoccupied on his phone that he had walked past his house and arrived in front of the grocery shop. He turned around and, removing his browsing history, opened the door and headed into his apartment. 

“Chance, guess what I found in your room!” was the first thing he heard when Chance entered his house.

Chance rummaged around his mind, cigarettes? pictures of Luna? makeup? He doesn’t remember keeping anything of the sort in his room. 

Wait, he kept his Black pink cards in his room! 

His mother must have found them!

Chance had snatched them from Melody’s locker during eighth grade. He was obsessed with the girl group at that time, but obviously, it was weird for a boy to be interested in k-pop, so he stole the cards for himself. It’s been a while since he had lost interest in Black pink and he regretted stealing the cards, but he didn’t have the heart to throw them away, and he had forgotten them.

Chance’s mind raced to find an excuse. He found them in a desk? No, he shouldn’t have taken them. Some girl gave them to him? No, that would be a strange gift.

Before he thought of the perfect excuse, Chance’s mother exclaimed, “It was a brochure of your primary school play!” The heavy rock in his heart dropped. “You were so cute! Do you even remember it? You were the little rabbit.”

“Yeah I know mom, it’s embarrassing.”

“I found a video of it, it was really blurry and the camera was shaking a lot, but it’s pretty nice,” Daisy showed her iPad to her mother.

“That’s him, right? No wait, that one’s him!”

As his mother and sister giggled, Chance muttered “Oh, come on,” and went into his room.

He opened his laptop and opened a PDF of his chemistry worksheet, he made the window extremely large, then he signed into Instagram. Chance was really skilled in switching the screen rapidly so that his parents would only see him doing his chemistry homework.

Sorry, I just got home.

Sometimes Chance would doubt if it was really worth spending so much time talking to someone he would never actually encounter in life, but Luna meant a lot to him. 

It’s really fun here in Florida, but I’m going home tmrw, because of school, u know

Whenever he hears a creek in the floorboard outside his room, Chance would switch his computer screen to his chemistry worksheet; and once in a few minutes, he would complete one question, in case his mother suspects why he’s taking so long to complete the worksheet.

“Time to go to bed, Daisy!” Chance’s mother cried out.

“I aaam.”

“It’s already 10 pm!”

“I’m packing my backpack, only a few seconds…”

Daisy always spends half an hour “preparing” to go to bed, strolling around the house, drinking her yogurt extremely slowly, and coming up with a lot of excuses. This night was no different.

After Daisy closed her bedroom door, Chance went into Instagram and started chatting with Luna with less fear of being caught by his mother. Usually after Daisy goes to bed, Chance’s mother would just sit on the sofa and read a magazine, or watch a film on her laptop. With one ear, Chance paid attention to Daisy, prepared to switch his screen again if she comes out with an excuse to postpone her bedtime. 

Chance was not surprised at all when Daisy came out of her room several minutes later, “Mom, I think I need to cut my nails.”

“Now? Wait until tomorrow.”

“But mom…” Daisy went into the living room to show her mother her nails.

“Yeah, they’re okay, you can cut them tomorrow.”

Chance couldn’t think of anything else to do besides sharing his day with Luna and listening to hers.

I’m gonna go to bed, I’ve got a long day ahead

Pip pip. Chance sent a kissy face and with that, he said good night to his mother and went to bed.

Chance didn’t know if he was weird or if anyone else does this, it would be really awkward if he asks anyone, even his close friends; but every night as he lie in bed, Chance would daydream (or rather night-but-awake-dream) of imaginary conversations between him and Luna, and fantasizing about what would happen if Luna went to the same school as Chance.

Chance’s body needed rest, but his mind could not pull away from Luna.

“Hi Chance,” he imagined Luna’s voice to be soft but somewhat somber.

“Hey Luna,” perhaps he whispered out loud, but he didn’t care.

“Is it really you? I never thought that I could actually meet you in real life!” Luna’s smile lighted everything up.

“Me neither, you’re even prettier than the photos,” Chance grinned flirtatiously.

“You know, I’m really bored tonight, I was wondering if you would like to hang out in the mall or something…” Luna’s cheeks turned into a slight pinkish hue.

“Of course, what about six pm, At Redsky mall? It’s really fun there, you know.”

“Sure, I’ll see you there.”

Chance couldn’t recall how their story continued, perhaps he had fallen asleep by then, but he never actually continued the story, every day, he just starts something new. These imaginative scenes were nothing close to reality, but it was a pleasure to visualize them.

The girls in Chance’s school weren’t so much worse than Luna. There were several girls who were really hot, but before Chance had planned out how to ask them out, they have already been taken by the other boys.

It would be much easier if the girls just told the boys if they would like them, then Chance could avoid the awkwardness and go straight for the girls which he was likely to be with.

It seemed so easy for the other boys to spit out that they liked the girls, but for Chance, these words required endless planning and analysis of every possible response of the girl. Even with all the planning, Chance still wouldn’t have the guts to say it out loud, only to repeat them over and over in his head and practice them when no one was around.

Chance had asked his friends how they managed to get the girls falling for them and the answer was simple: be confident and ask them out. For Chance it was way easier said than done. Well, what if he had accidentally said the wrong word and upset the girl? Girls are so hard to delve into, they’re thoughts and emotions rarely show directly on their faces. 

If only there was a girl who understands him as well as Luna does…